Archive for May, 2011

If your web site is running on Apache, and almost all are, there’s a simple way to protect directories on your web server. This method can be very secure, when combined with HTTPS and some good practices on your part, but it can also be a simple way to limit access to just a few people who know a password – perhaps as an alternative to Facebook sharing.

These are basic .htaccess directives, that most web servers should allow. The first segment is to force the use of HTTPS, you might want uncomment that if HTTPS is important to your application. The second section turns on basic authentication and directs the web server to where to get the password file – you can put the password file anywhere your web server can access it and it does not have to be in the same folder as the .htaccess file. You are responsible for finding the full unix path to the file, either from the pwd command or the “Get Info” option inside a file browser.

.htpasswd
guest:{SHA}K8+J8fKKKxjnREM2J4/C72Qawa4=

This file is the results of the command htpasswd -sc .htpasswd guest. The s after the – is for SHA-based password hashing and the c after the – is for create. The file can be added to or updated with the command htpasswd .htpasswd username. Run the command htpasswd --help for more information. Read more...(433 words, estimated 1:44 mins reading time)

Here are the results you’ve been waiting for: the results of RimCount.com tracking of the Roll Up The Win Campaign from a large Canadian Coffee and Donut chain.

RimCount.com collected tweets with the hastag #rolluptherim and extracted ratios and recorded them.

The site really took off when it started tweeting back with the Twitter account twitter.com/rimcountdotcom . The site automated the awarding and notification of “badges” for different items like drinking more than one “rim” a day, or tweeting about it more than once a day. Of course the best and worst record holders were notified. I was also contacted by the author of the Facebook App “My Rollups” apps.facebook.com/myrollups to compare notes – looks like Facebook users are a little luckier.

Here they are, as unscientifically tracked on Twitter, in 2011 there were:

21552 rims

4181 wins

17439 losses

13007 tweets

5853 Total tweet’ers

Here’s a Wordle of the top 150 words tweeted with the hastag #rolluptherim (without that tag)

About Matt Clare:

Matt Clare is a Canadian Technologist who is focused on building, deploying and refining the best tools possible for teachers and learners in higher education. Advocate of making all web content accessible by making the creation process easy.